that dinner, I was made a formal written offer by Motherwell of a two-year apprenticeship plus a year’s professional contract.
At around the same time, Manchester City’s scout Peter Neill, who had seen me play in the Milk Cup in his home town of Coleraine, invited myself and Gerry Taggart to take part in trials for the Maine Road club. The trials went very well and City let me know through Peter that they wanted me to sign for them.
So I now had two offers on the table. After much discussion with Dessie, Harry and my parents, it was decided that I would sign for Motherwell. The main reason I signed for Motherwell in preference to Manchester City was that we thought I would have a better chance of progressing more quickly at a smaller club where I might get more opportunities to break into the first team.
I was hugely excited at the prospect of playing full-time professional football, even as an apprentice, and couldn’t wait to finish school and get over to Scotland.
But joining the Steelmen, as Motherwell were nicknamed because of the forges around the town, turned out to be the wrong choice for me. In fact, I would go as far as to say that my move to Scotland and Motherwell was a complete disaster.
Motherwell were then in the Scottish Premier League, and the previous year the club had celebrated its centenary. They played at Fir Park, so called because it was once the corner of Lord Dalziel’s country estate in which fir trees grew.
In the 1987/88 season the manager was Tommy McLean, the former Rangers and Scotland player, and his assistant was Tom Forsyth, also a former Rangers player. That season the club had a staff of thirty-three full-time footballers, and they had a lot of players who were either already well known in Scottish football or who would become so, such as former Celtic player Tom McAdam, ex-Rangers man Robert Russell and a certain Tom Boyd whose name will reappear later in this book.
In July 1987, having just turned sixteen, I packed my bags and left home for a new life as an apprentice footballer with Motherwell. It was the first extended period I would spend away from my family, and I have to say that I did not enjoy it one bit.
It was certainly a huge shock to me to have to move into digs. My very first lodgings were with the grandmother of one of the Motherwell players, Chris McCart. Some thirteen years later when I signed for Celtic, one of the first people to greet me was the selfsame Chris, who by then was on Celtic’s staff as a youth coach. Football can be a small world at times.
It can also be tough and uncompromising, especially for young apprentices. Among the boys who joined at the same time as me was Scott Leitch, who later captained Motherwell and is now the manager of Ross County. Scott was slightly older than me—in fact, every signed player at the club was older than me.
Our day consisted of an early rise in order to take the public transport I needed to get to Fir Park. We had to be there before the senior players as we apprentices had to clean their boots and make sure the kit was laid out and the place was tidy before training began. We were nominally under the supervision of chief scout and youth development officer Bobby Jenks, but from the start we were coached and trained by Tommy McLean and his coaching staff.
I was surprised to be thrown in at the deep end by being made to train with the first-team players and the rest of the senior squad. I was still a raw boy, and not physically up to the task of training like a full-time professional footballer. We would be taken to Strathclyde Park near Hamilton and made to run up steep slopes, then there would be all sorts of running and exercises that really were more suited to adults than a teenager. I was constantly getting it in the neck for my lack of fitness and I had to admit that I was struggling as I was overweight and had never experienced anything like the intensity of this training. After the senior players went off for the afternoon we apprentices would have to go back to Fir Park and do more cleaning and tidying of the stadium in preparation for the forthcoming season. Was it any wonder that I went back to my digs exhausted most nights?
I loved playing most of all and when I finally got the chance to play in a few warm-up games, I thought that I performed quite well. I definitely held my own among my age group, and went with Motherwell’s Under-16 side to play in the Milk Cup at Coleraine where I had happy memories. We did well in our first game, beating Newcastle United’s boys 5-2, before losing to Liverpool in the semi-final, the Reds eventually going on to win the tournament. Once again I was selected to play in the closing match, this time for the Rest of the World which beat a Northern Ireland select eleven 2-1. I must have set some sort of Milk Cup record having played for the Northern Irish select at Under-14 level and then for the Rest of the World at a higher age group—and I was on the winning side both times.
Back at Fir Park, there was just a chance that I might have made it into the reserves. The training was murder, however, and though I was determined to stick it out, I picked up a thigh injury and that set me back several weeks.
I was also suffering badly from homesickness. It did not help matters that for various reasons, I was shunted about from landlady to landlady, and I was in three different digs in three months.
The fact that I was the only Irish apprentice brought me some unwelcome attention. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was picked on and singled out to be the butt of a few jokes, usually involving ‘Irishness’, a subject beloved of the politically incorrect comedians of the time. I remember that my being a Catholic from Northern Ireland was also the subject of some remarks. On one occasion a senior player grabbed the broom I was using and showed me how to sweep up. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s bit more Protestant-like.’ I had never heard that phrase before and though I now know it’s a common expression in the west of Scotland to describe things being neat and tidy, back then at the age of sixteen, I didn’t know how to deal with this kind of banter.
I was very unhappy and couldn’t see me getting anywhere fast, and on a pittance for a wage I couldn’t exactly live the high life. Like quite a few clubs, Motherwell had taken advantage of the Government’s funding of youth training and my wage was set at the Youth Training Scheme allowance of £28.50, although the club, to be fair, paid for my lodgings.
The last straw came when I was moved into my third digs with an old lady who was perfectly civil but bordering on the stone deaf. We had nothing in common and conversation was minimal. My life consisted of cleaning boots, training, more cleaning, then going home to eat my dinner, watch some telly and go to bed. I was fed up and miserable, and something had to give.
Part of the contract I had signed entitled me to a couple of holidays during the season and by the beginning of September I decided to use up one of my breaks to go home to Lurgan. I had a long chat with my dad, during which I told him how nightmarish things had become. I told him that my brief flirtation with professional football, Scottish style, was over and that I wanted to come home and start my studies again.
My dad then had a long telephone conversation with Tommy McLean during which he told the manager in no uncertain terms that he was not happy with the way I was being treated. Tommy made it clear that he very much wanted me to stay and that things would improve, but my mind was made up and that was the end of my time with Motherwell. I don’t blame anyone for what happened and I’ve never held it against the club that I had a poor start to my career. It was just one of those things that happens in football, and at least I had shown enough potential for Tommy McLean to want to keep me on.
I returned a wiser lad to Lurgan and home, and also to St Michael’s School. I had only missed a few weeks of term, and I was sure I could catch up and eventually sit my ‘A’ levels. Despite my harsh experience at Motherwell, I also wanted to continue playing football.
Nothing better illustrates the topsy-turvy nature of football than what happened to me next. Within days of my arrival home I was invited to train with Glenavon, the local side who played in the Irish League. Their manager Terry Nicholson had heard of my return and moved quickly to sign me on professional terms, albeit for only a few quid a week. There were the usual complications over the cancellation of my registration with Motherwell, but the Scottish Football Association finally cleared me to play.
Glenavon played at Mourneview Park in Lurgan and it was there that I trained and played with the reserves. As part-timers, we trained on Tuesday and Thursday